Sustainable Communities and Environmental Design

Get Your Minor in Sustainable Communities and Environmental Design! 

The Sustainable Communities and Environmental Design (SCED) minor is open to students in ALL majors and encompasses courses from colleges across the campus. It is part of CAPPA--the College of Architecture, Planning, and Public Affairs.

Program Overview:

The SCED minor provides students with the multidisciplinary planning, design, and analysis skills necessary to address the diverse environmental challenges facing communities around the globe today. Students can choose to specialize in one of three areas of focus, tailored around critical aspects of planning and designing sustainable, socially just, and resilient communities, where they will acquire the tools required to actively contribute to solving environmental crises. The multidisciplinary coursework under this degree offers students the chance to engage with many different disciplines, such as architectural design, engineering, urban planning, and public policy, building their understanding of how to address fundamentally interdisciplinary problems and positioning them to be transformative agents in a rapidly changing world.

This minor can complement any undergraduate degree from across campus, providing UTA graduates with a competitive edge when entering a workforce compelled to engage with environmental dilemmas. With 18 credit hours (21 with an additional optional class in the “analyze and apply skills” component), the minor can be combined with most majors and, in some cases, already completed coursework will qualify for credit. No matter what field you are in, the SCED Minor will equip you with the applied design, socio-economic, and technical tools necessary to holistically deal with some of the most complex and challenging problems of the 21st century.

The Sustainable Communities and Environmental Design minor differs from most minors in two important respects. First, it is highly interdisciplinary and comprises courses in diverse fields. Second, courses often simultaneously satisfy requirements in a student's major field of study. Together, these differences provide considerable flexibility to construct degree plans while not significantly increasing the overall hours required for undergraduate degrees.

NOTE: Minor length – option to be 21 and not 18 hours if an additional skill course is taken. Increases the feasibility of a two course sequence in GIS or data science.

** Due to prerequisite restrictions all ARCH/INTD classes and some LARC/PLAN classes are limited to architecture and interior design declared (3rd/4th year) majors only. 

Students interested in adding the Minor in Sustainable Communities and Environmental Design to their degree plan should send questions to cappa.advising@uta.edu.

 SCED MINOR REQUEST FORM

All courses are not offered every semester. Check the Schedule of Classes to find course offerings. 

CURRICULUM:

REQUIRED - FOUNDATIONS - 6 hours

• ESST 2300 – Intro to Environmental Studies (existing campus class, to be converted to 8 weeks online by SP26)
• PLAN 4320 – Sustainable Communities (currently 8 week online class) * 

DEEPEN UNDERSTANDING - 6 hours selectives

Students can choose from one of the following subareas for their 6 hours in “deepen understanding."

Group 1: Cities and Community Design

• ARCH 4307 – The Life of Cities
• INTD 4314/ARCH 4314 – Historic Preservation
• LARC 4300 – Intro to Landscape Architecture
• PAPP 4307 – Urban Geography
• PLAN 1301 – Intro to Urban Life
• PLAN 3301 – The Metroplex
• PLAN 4305 – Foundations of Environmental Protection and Sustainability
• PLAN 4327 – Green Cities and Transportation
• UDES 1301 – Intro to Principles of Sustainable Urban Design
• ENVR 1330/GEOL 1330 – Global Warming

Group 2: Civil Engineering / Community Infrastructure Design

• CE 3300 – Intro to Sustainable Engineering
• CE 3334 – Principles of Environmental Engineering
• CE 3342 – Water Resources Engineering
• CE 4350 – Into to Air Pollution
• CE 4351 – Physical Unit Processes
• CE 4354 – Intro to Solid and Hazardous Waste Management

Group 3: Environmental Design

• ARCH 3325 – Tectonics III: Architecture + the Environment
• ARCH 4311 Planning and Designing the Sustainable City
• ARCH 4314/INTD 4314 Historic Preservation
• ARCH 4395 – approved topics: Adv Manufacturing and Sustainability; Sustainable Intelligent Cities; Watershed Urbanism and Rewilding
• ENVR 2314 – The Global Environment and Human Health
• HIST 3336/GEOG 3336 – Environmental History of the United States
• INTD 3361 – Environmental Design and Sustainability

ANALYZE AND APPLY SKILLS - 6-9 hours selectives

• ARCH 4325 – Environmental Control Systems I
• ARCH 4326 – Environmental Control Systems II
• ARCH 4368 – Green Design and Construction
• PLAN 4356 Intro GIS (8 week online or 16 week campus)
• PLAN 4357 Intermediate GIS (likely will have an online 8 week as well by SP26, not just 16 week campus)
• CE 3131 – Environmental Analysis
• CE 4323 – Landfill Design
• CE 4355 – Design of Water and wastewater Treatment Facilities
• ENVR 3387 – Environmental Science Field Methods
• GEOL 4356 – Environmental Risk Assessment
• DATA 1301 Intro to Data Science

Also below if student qualifies, these have math-related prerequisites

• DATA 3401 Python for Data Science
• DATA 3441 Statistical Methods for Data Science 

For advising assistance and/or questions about the SCED minor, please email cappa.advising@uta.edu.